Israeli forces advancing into the southern Gaza Strip's main city pounded areas near the biggest hospital still functioning in the enclave on Thursday, sending patients and residents fleeing a battle they feared would lay the city to waste. The heaviest battle of the year so far was under way in Khan Younis, sheltering hundreds of thousands of people who fled the north earlier in the war, now in its fourth month. The Israeli military said a brigade in Khan Younis, now operating further south than troops had ventured before, had "eliminated dozens of terrorists in close-quarters combat and with the assistance of tank fire and air support".